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Other computer-related NIH questions: how could NIH introduce mandatory electronic grant submission before they had a viable way of supporting the Mac platform that approximately half their grantees use?

And why did they take 5 years longer than NSF to introduce electronic submission?

Because, although scientists, the NSF, and the NIH have a high proportion of Mac users, the federal government itself is almost entirely Windows-centric, with almost no Macs. I’m guessing the people who were responsible for sending out requests for bids for the electronic submission systems were not part of the NIH and therefore having Mac compatibility was not a high priority.

Tell me about it. We used to be all UNIX but then we became nearly-all Windows, despite the fact that we have to run UNIX emulators of dozens of programs that don’t run on Windows… but the management types are happy. And I guess that’s what counts.

Possibly related: back when I was in college, if someone was a “compter programmer”, they knew how to turn a formula into a program and were technically oriented. The last few times I’ve gone to hire programmers for research projects, we’ve got many applicants, but only a small percentage can really turn a formula into a program. The ones who are only familiar with Windows are generally the worst in this respect.